Todd Huston: Indiana’s fiscal responsibility leads to wins for Hoosiers

Indiana recently concluded its 2025 legislative session, advancing our state’s next two-year budget. In a tighter-than-expected budget year, Indiana’s continued commitment to fiscal responsibility will lead to big wins for Hoosiers.

Faced with an uncertain revenue forecast, Indiana did exactly what families across the state have been doing. We tightened our belts and reduced spending while prioritizing tax relief for our residents who have been feeling the impact of rising costs.

Most state agency budgets have been reduced, and we’re asking these agencies to innovate and find cost savings to benefit taxpayers. Indiana has a strong record of driving efficiencies while continuing to provide essential services.

In addition to maintaining Indiana’s triple A credit rating and responsible reserves, we also cut taxes for Hoosiers, lowering Indiana’s state income tax each of the next two years. The income tax cuts combined with other tax cuts this session will deliver more than a billion dollars in tax relief in the next two years alone.

In a state already lauded for its tax climate, this is significant relief that continues our track record of cutting taxes for Hoosiers every year over the last decade, saving taxpayers more than $20 billion.

At the same time, Indiana is fully investing in our most critical priorities to keep our state moving forward. This next budget increases funding 5% for K-12 students—the most funding support to date for educating our youth.

We also delivered on our long-standing goal of providing school choice to all Hoosiers. Starting next year, every family will get to use their state tuition support at the school they choose. The outcomes we’re seeing are worth this investment. Indiana recently jumped to sixth in the nation for fourth grade and eighth grade reading and made similar gains in math.

The budget also makes strategic investments in our growing communities. Indiana recently ranked seventh in the country for attracting new residents. Our low taxes, results-focused schools and vibrant communities are drawing people to our state and accelerating economic growth. Indiana’s gross domestic product grew faster in the last few years than did the GDP of any of our neighboring states.

To continue this growth, we’re investing in housing access to meet demand, continuing to prioritize public safety and providing support for our key resources like water and infrastructure.

This session, lawmakers also worked to help reduce the cost of living for Hoosiers. We know families are sitting around the dinner table making tough decisions and doing their best to make ends meet as prices have gone up.

That’s why we prioritized actions we could take at the state level to reduce some of these costs. We passed new laws to inject more transparency and competition into our health care system to drive down costs and empower patients. We took steps to embrace new energy generation to help us support economic development while reducing energy costs for Hoosiers. We also continued efforts to streamline regulations and encourage more child care facilities to start and expand.

We’re also encouraging local government to do its part to reduce costs for families. This session, we passed robust property tax relief and reform that provides more than $1.3 billion of property tax relief to homeowners and moves us to a more taxpayer-friendly system. Local government, just like state government, will need to find efficiencies to best serve their residents.

The pressures of a tight budget only strengthened our resolve to keep delivering fiscally responsible, pro-growth policies for our state and for Hoosiers. Strategic governance that keeps taxes and cost of living low for our residents will continue to propel Indiana forward.•

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Huston, R-Fishers, is speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives.